No News Is Not Good News
Now that The Amsterdam Recorder has moved the staff of The Courier-Standard-Enterprise from Fort Plain To Amsterdam, it’s only a matter of time before Montgomery County will only have one newspaper. When I moved here in 1978, there were three newspapers in the county. Besides the two mentioned above, there was The Mohawk Valley Democrat, a weekly out of Fonda, which closed in 1990. Years ago almost every village in the county had its own newspaper.
While The Courier-Standard-Enterprise, an amalgamation of three newspapers, has been owned by The Recorder for sometime, it maintained its own identity. With its move to Amsterdam, that identity is likely to be lost. I believe, however, that in time The C-S-E will be completely absorbed into The Recorder and disappear altogether.
Of course, The Daily Gazette out of Schenectady maintains an office and a strong presence in Montgomery County. Actually, The Gazette prints almost as much Montgomery County news as does The Recorder, and is a superior newspaper, which is why I subscribe to it rather than to The Recorder.
With all due respect to Montgomery County’s only other serious blogger, who writes a farm column for The Recorder, The Recorder has gone downhill since Tony Benjamin was dismissed as editor. The editors now are too lazy to write their own editorials and substitute editorials from other newspapers. The Sunday Recorder is almost completely made up of articles from wire services. While Tony Benjamin was too liberal for my taste, he made the paper exciting, covered more than fires and car accidents, and wrote his own editorials.
Since most of the radio stations in the county get their news from the newspapers, that means there are few news sources in the county. With the changes being made at The Courier-Standard-Enterprise there will be one less news source--one more reason why bloggers are needed in Montgomery County.
While The Courier-Standard-Enterprise, an amalgamation of three newspapers, has been owned by The Recorder for sometime, it maintained its own identity. With its move to Amsterdam, that identity is likely to be lost. I believe, however, that in time The C-S-E will be completely absorbed into The Recorder and disappear altogether.
Of course, The Daily Gazette out of Schenectady maintains an office and a strong presence in Montgomery County. Actually, The Gazette prints almost as much Montgomery County news as does The Recorder, and is a superior newspaper, which is why I subscribe to it rather than to The Recorder.
With all due respect to Montgomery County’s only other serious blogger, who writes a farm column for The Recorder, The Recorder has gone downhill since Tony Benjamin was dismissed as editor. The editors now are too lazy to write their own editorials and substitute editorials from other newspapers. The Sunday Recorder is almost completely made up of articles from wire services. While Tony Benjamin was too liberal for my taste, he made the paper exciting, covered more than fires and car accidents, and wrote his own editorials.
Since most of the radio stations in the county get their news from the newspapers, that means there are few news sources in the county. With the changes being made at The Courier-Standard-Enterprise there will be one less news source--one more reason why bloggers are needed in Montgomery County.
posted by Anonymous at
6:11 AM
2 Comments:
Too bad that competition is going out the window. I remember when the Amsterdam Star was publishing in the mid-90s -- local news coverage in both the Recorder and the Gazette seemed to go up a notch ... and after the Star folded, laziness seemed to set in.
Nothing like competition to bring out the best, and a monopoly to bring out the worst.
By
Strikeslip, at 5:52 PM
Your comment about editors being lazy is off the mark. At the very least, it shows you're uninformed. Do you know what the staffing is now, compared to Tony Benjamin's tenure? If not, then you're not qualified to make comments like that.
By
Anonymous, at 8:29 PM
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